A household electrical appliance is known of the type comprising firstly a support and secondly a waffle-iron device which comprises a top panel and a bottom panel hinged to each other by a hinge to move between an open position and a closed position, the device being pivotally mounted on the support about a pivot axis to move between at least a working angular position in which the axis of the hinge is oriented horizontally, the top panel being above the bottom panel, and an upside-down second angular position in which the axis of the hinge is oriented horizontally, the top panel being beneath the bottom panel.
Such an appliance is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,116,688 in which the device further comprises a central panel so as to form a double waffle-iron, the top panel and the bottom panel each including a handle connected to the corresponding panel via a half-shaft extending along the pivot axis when the device is in the closed position, the two half-shafts forming a pivot shaft when the device is in the closed position.
Nevertheless, in such a household electrical appliance, it is difficult to spread the waffle batter uniformly in the waffle-iron: when the waffle-iron is full of waffle batter, swelling of the batter causes the panels to move apart, and thus the batter does not tend to spread uniformly over the surface of the panels, but instead swells with a large component in the panel-opening direction. It is plausible that in the appliance described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,116,688, the central panel does not move away from the panel placed beneath it (the bottom panel in the working position or the top panel in the upside-down position) because of the weight of the central panel and the weight of the panel which is situated above it, however, whether or not that is the case, there will always be movement apart between the central panel and the panel which is situated above it. Furthermore, in a device having only two panels, the weight of a single panel is insufficient to prevent the panels moving apart. This moving apart of the panels necessarily leads to batter being lost from the appliance and to waffles that swell little.